Pirate radio

Everybody loves a pirate

How and why Ofcom is trying to legalise pirate radio

IT PLAYS the sort of new and innovative music that commercial radio usually avoids. Most of its output is “urban” (ie, black) music, which means diversity on the airwaves. But although it sounds like a public-service broadcaster, it's not a new BBC channel: it's pirate radio.

The best evidence of how pirate radio overlaps the BBC's remit is the corporation's new digital station, 1Xtra. It is so closely modelled on pirates that they complain about the competition. Now the government may be coming round to the view that pirate radio is a good thing. Enforcers from Ofcom, Britain's media regulator, have been cracking down on pirates all year, but that's partly in the hope of persuading them to go legal: the regulator is offering them cheap new “community radio” licenses.

Pirate radio stations don't buy licences, which is why they get into trouble with the regulator. Their signals can interfere with the emergency services and air-traffic control as well as commercial radio, though no serious harm has resulted.

Pirates are surprisingly professional. Like their legal counterparts, they have breakfast shows and strict rules against swearing on air. Most of the established stations would like to go legal if they could, says Nick Cage, manager of Dizzee Rascal, a popular rapper who started off on pirate radio. Indeed, many record companies already use the stations to get publicity for new albums and to look for new talent. “It's like everyone going to the recording studio and listening to the music before it goes through the mainstream channels,” says Mr Rascal.

But despite their professionalism, most pirate radio operators make little money. Instead, they play music because they love it. What little cash they do get comes from advertising from local businesses. Aspiring DJs are another source of income: they typically pay £10-£20 per slot. And stations are often used as shop windows for operators' own record labels and talents as DJs. But replacing a transmitter can cost £300, and Ofcom sometimes takes the new one away again within a week.

Their business models may not be compatible with the new licences: these cover a range of only 5 km or so, which is too small for most stations. 9nine3FM, a pirate in south London, broadcasts over a radius of about 30-40 miles, and says that it would lose advertising revenue if restricted to such a tiny range.

Many pirates will reject Ofcom's community-radio licence idea. For them, new technology may offer an alternative. Sales of digital radios are rising quickly. Pirates worry that they will not be able to broadcast illegally on digital radio for technical reasons and because it is more costly. On the other hand, if legal radio migrates to digital, that may leave space for the pirates on the old analogue airwaves. A nearer-term solution is the internet, though the pirates' audience often lacks broadband internet access at home. Some are already broadcasting on the internet in tandem with FM radio: 9nine3FM, for instance, started streaming on the web in January, and another, Lightning FM, based in Brixton, will start next year. But the internet may not have the cachet of the airwaves: after all, it's perfectly legal.